For food consumers, food producers, and government regulatory agencies alike, food safety is an ever-growing concern. One reflection of this is the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), legislation signed into law by President Obama on Jan. 4, 2011. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states in a fact sheet on its web site (http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm239907.htm), “Background on the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)”:
“The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) . . . enables FDA to better protect public health by strengthening the food safety system . . . . Mandatory produce safety standards: FDA must establish science-based, minimum standards for the safe production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables . . . . New authorities include: 1 . . . . Enhanced product tracing abilities: FDA is directed to establish a system that will enhance its ability to track and trace both domestic and imported foods. In addition, FDA is directed to establish pilot projects to explore and evaluate methods to rapidly and effectively identify recipients of food to prevent or control a food-borne illness outbreak.” (Bold emphasis added.)
Even as this document is being prepared (May/June 2016), the FDA has established regulations under the FSMA, and is engaged in further active rulemaking to implement the FSMA. For more information on the FSMA and related rulemaking, see also http://www.pma.com/topics/food-safety/fsma.
The FSMA is expected to touch every segment of the produce business from farm to fork. “Produce” is a general term for a group of farm-produced crops and goods, especially fruits and vegetables, but possibly also including meats, grains, oats, etc. The term “produce” commonly implies that the farm products, as presented to consumers in stores, are fresh and generally in the same state as where they were harvested.
Rules are that are affected by the FSMA pertain to, among other areas: 1. Preventive Control Rules for Human Foods; 2. Sanitary Food Transportation Regulation; and 3. Traceability Regulations (yet to be proposed).
An organization called GS1 serves businesses in twenty-five industries in the United States by facilitating industry initiatives, and administrating the GS1 System of standards. GS1 develops and implements industry and company-level solutions and standards to optimize business processes, including supply chain management standards. (See http://www.gs1us.org/for more information.) Among those standards have been voluntary produce traceability initiatives with GS1 marking requirements. (See https://www.gs1us.org/gs1_us_search?q=fresh%20foods %20booklet for more information.)
Under the FSMA, GS1 marking requirements or similar requirements may become legally required. These requirements could be driven by the retailers (through liability concerns) or by new regulations. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-sOQJHytxk for a video with more information.)
Further, in addition to government requirements and regulations, safety- and health-conscious consumers and consumer organizations increasingly call upon food producers to ensure and enhance the safety of the food chain.
As indicated in the quoted material above, one area of concern is the safety of produce, typically fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are subject to diseases and are exposed to numerous chemicals (fertilizers and others), and are potentially subject to spoilage during shipment.
Ideally, then, food producers should be able to provide a detailed accounting of produce and environments to which the produce is subject, from first picking on the farm, through the entire transport and processing chain, and straight to the consumer end consumer. This is especially desirable for produce which will reach the end consumer with little or no processing—that is, raw fruits and vegetables for direct consumer consumption. However, tracking can also be valuable for fruits and vegetables which are to be processed (chopped, pureed, or otherwise modified) and mixed with other ingredients.
As produce is often farmed and transported by persons who may not be experts in data management or data tracking, there is a challenge in recording and maintaining a record of produce from point of origin to point of processing or point of sale.
What is needed, then, is an improved system and method for recording and tracking data pertinent to the quality of produce which is grown and harvested on a farm, and maintaining a track of that data from the harvesting on the farm to at least a designated point-of-processing, and more typically to the point-of-consumer-sale.